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This is a crowdsourced column, written after I invited readers to send me ideas. So many readers suggested economic precariousness that I am unable to credit any one person. I thank you all. — Heather Mallick

I was standing at Bloor and Ossington waiting to meet the person who had sold me a blazer on eBay when it hit me. “I am student-poor,” I thought. “Again.”

It wasn’t eBay that scared me — a turquoise Smythe tuxedo jacket is a real find at full price, at any price — it was that I was meeting the seller in person to save 15 bucks on postage.

A variety of misunderstandings took place on the street corner, which suggested I do have a fallback position — prostitute, drug dealer, soft touch — so that was nice. The seller turned out to be an attractive young woman who handed over the jacket and hugged me. That was nice too, especially since my husband was hovering in case she turned out to be a big hairy rapist, his original prediction.

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I am a grown-up and my income has not sunk, not as such, but the return on my savings is risible. Bank tellers smirk when I put cash in my TFSA for an interest rate that means I am actually losing money. Those tellers are waiting for their jobs to be outsourced. Go to hell, their expressions say.

Ironically, the branch is collecting obsolete pennies in a big ole jar, which it will donate to charity. The immensely profitable bank doing the outsourcing won’t donate $1 million from its petty cash. No, it will collect the dregs from the saddos who keep their money in a Super Saver Account, as I do. When I opened it, the bank forced me to open a line of credit.

The best metaphor for the gradual lowering of wages in Canada and other austerity-hit nations is “flat-packing.” I don’t mean Ikea’s hellish M.O. — although we’ll return to it — but that thing you do in your hotel room at the end of a vacation. You press on your suitcase across its entire surface — generally by sitting on it — until the clothes compress and air seeps out. That’s one thin suitcase, as flat as a Prairie province.

The lowering is gradual. We’re slowly getting used to a shabbier quality of life. Shock and awe might make us riot in the streets. You can only push Canadians so far. It’s pretty far, but still.

Several factors help conceal our plight, even from ourselves. Fast fashion is one. Until at least the Second World War, garments, in the flat-cap sense, were a signifier of poverty, but the rock-bottom wages paid to women in Bangladesh have changed the appearance of poverty in Western nations. Only we know how bad things are.

Cheap fast food also soothes us — local organic food is becoming a new class signifier — as do cheap vacations. Most people can afford a cruise, on a ship staffed by poorly paid Filipinos, with low fares made possible by the vast quantities of booze bought by passengers.

The huge casino being planned for Toronto would have soothed — and then devastated — the precariat with their precarious wages.

Pleasurable distraction is very cheap. Netflix costs $8 a month. Debt is cheap. Ikea, the unpaid internship of household furnishings, is cheaper than ever, partly because its goods now contain actual cardboard.

I was astonished to discover that the LCBO workers who nearly went on strike Friday are not staffers. “Two-thirds are casuals with no guaranteed hours, few benefits and an average income that is less than $26,000 a year — at a corporation that made $1.6 billion in pure profit last year,” their union says.

If they were federal workers, Ottawa would have ended the strike immediately. Strikes interfere with flat-packing. Ottawa plays baggage handler, and strikes are protrusions, a provocation in a relentlessly flat-packed landscape.

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